Introduction
Hello, dear reader!
Welcome to the Brainy Blog’s newest series, The Theology of Storytelling. We are super excited about this one and are praying it will be helpful, edifying, and encouraging to all the Christian storytellers out there!
The goal of this series is to break down and explore the concept of theology in the stories we create, whether they be written, visual, or auditory. While the context of the series may lean more towards the literary side of storytelling — particularly in terms of the examples used — the same principles can be applied across a wide variety of storytelling formats. No matter what your preferred medium, the goal is to help you strengthen the message you are conveying to the audience and learn new tools of the trade to refine your craft.
To start, the word “theology” tends to carry a lot of weight in the Christian community. It’s typically associated with scholars, preachers, priests, and people who have gone to seminary or received a formal education in Scripture or related topics. In essence, it's not a term that most of us would apply to ourselves and our own, day-to-day faith journeys. However, Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines theology as:
: the study of religious faith, practice, and experience
especially: the study of God and of God's relation to the world
Diving into theology does not require formal training as we each, in our own way, study God. In fact, we should be actively studying God’s nature on a daily basis. Reading and meditating on the Scripture, praying, worshipping, and fellowshipping with other believers are all ways that we are called to learn more about God and how He relates back to us. Evidence of His nature permeates everything, even our very hearts, where He has written the law (Hebrews 10:16). Theology is something we all, as Christians, automatically engage in. Whether it is the high-level meta of the supernatural or the more practical applications of love, peace, and patience, when we seek out an understanding of God, we are participating in theology.
Why is this so important when we create, then? This is because we, as His image-bearers, cannot escape making a commentary on the nature of God. We represent Him in everything that we do! Every single action we take, every single word we speak, every single thing we create, is stating that either He is a loving God whom we gladly obey or that we reject His nature and choose our own preferences above His. To represent Him accurately, we must first understand Him. To create good as He created good (Genesis 1:31; of course, there’s only so much “good” we can create on this broken earth) and reflect His nature in our works, we need to work on embracing theology.
This means that every single story we tell in turn tells the world what we think of God and His nature. And I do not mean simply for Christian creatives. Every person’s creation, whether they are saved or not, reflects back on God. From the most hedonistic secular movie to the most devout and God-honoring piece of Christian literature, it is all a commentary on God. The latter is a positive reflection on God; it states that He is worthy of love and sacrifice. The former is the opposite, instead conveying the message that God is not worth respect, that His laws (which are good and just) are not worth obeying. All stories reflect what their creator thinks of God.
Now, this may seem incredibly intimidating — being image-bearers of God, being unable to avoid making a commentary on Him — but this is actually where the fun begins. We can use stories to express the goodness, faithfulness, mercy, and love of God. We can use stories to bring light into a dark world, to relate to others that are suffering and let them know they are not alone. We can use stories to express the hope that we have in Jesus Christ. This is a powerful and wonderful tool to help other image-bearers learn more about how marvelous our righteous and patient God is!
As the series goes on, we will deep dive into each element of the theology of storytelling. From the higher-level “meta” purpose of the stories we are trying to tell, to crafting for a specific audience, to various tools of the trade such as metaphors and symbolism. Each blog post will be part educational and part theological. In addition to the normal “essay” blog posts, we will also have example posts, where we tear apart a piece of fiction and see what makes it tick, and exercise posts, to give you an opportunity for some hands-on experience. Our hope is to provide a well-rounded look at how to tell God-honoring stories as a Christian, no matter what form your story takes. Novels, movies, audio dramas, comic books, short stories, picture books, roleplaying games, even pieces of artwork; we hope that this series encourages you and provides new tools to help you tell the stories you want to tell!
Ana (A.N.G.) Reynolds
